The Final Straw

I'm no fan of David Brooks', but his op-ed today is the final straw. Titled Whose Team Am I On?, I read it half hoping that this would be a follow-up to his column from last week, Masters of Sleaze in which he took on the GOP and Tom DeLay for their ethics violations. Instead, it turns out that Brooks wanted to tell the world that he is thinking of rooting for the new Washington Nationals instead of the Mets.

Now, why he would consider switching allegiance to a team that barely even exists is beyond me. But, as is typically the case with Brooks, it isn't the sentiment it's the pseudo-intellectualism that accompanies it that really annoys me. You see, Brooks lets us know that he is agonizing over this decision and that this process has led him to question the very nature of fan loyalty. He identifies three reasons why a person could love a team. The first is simple attachment to the team's hometown, the second is a bond forged through years of shared emotions and the third is "a philosophical love, a love for the Platonic ideal the team embodies" (naturally the last of these is the one he identifies with). All of which is nonsense.

Fan loyalty is, quite simply, about loyalty. Usually we pick our teams early in life, and sometimes a special moment (a day at the park with dad, a particularly exciting pennant race) or familial/peer pressure helps forge the bond. But once the choice is made it is rarely questioned and never (for the true fan) abandoned. The measure of a fan isn't based on physical location (true fans maintain their loyalty to a team regardless of where they live), shared emotions (though these certainly make up the experience), or some metaphysical attachment. Instead it is purely about committing to something, through good times and bad, no matter what. It's about sticking up for The Team when they lose and sticking it to everyone else when they win. It's about casting your lot with something you have no control over but that is guaranteed to give you highs (and lows) more pronounced than you normally experience in daily life.

This is the reason why, to the true fan, the worst type of fan is the fair-weather fan who jumps onto the bandwagon only when the going is good. Actually, the fair-weather fan is the second-worst type of fan. The traitor is the worst.